IT Pro Ranking: Data Center Management

Joe Onisick09/01/12

IT Pro Ranking: Data Center Management

As virtualization, automation and private clouds reshape the traditional data center, a host of tools is necessary to manage hardware and software efficiently. We invited IT pros who use, or have recently used or evaluated, data center management ­software and SaaS services to rate products in two areas: overall performance and data center management features. Three hundred fifty-seven IT pros responded to our survey. We began with a list of 19 products; 10 of those had sufficient responses to qualify for the full evaluation.

While VMware’s vCenter Operations Management Suite and Microsoft’s System Center are in use or have been evaluated by the greatest percentage of respondents, it was EMC’s Unified Infrastructure Manager that earned the highest scores for overall performance and features. IT pros also evaluated Cisco Systems’ Intelligent Automation for Cloud, HP’s Data Center Automation and Cloud Service Automation products, IBM’s Tivoli ­Provisioning Manager, Oracle’s Enterprise Manager, Symantec’s Altiris IT Management Suite and VMware’s vCloud Director.

As you look at our results, consider the demographics of respondents. Twenty-five ­percent fit the SMB category of less than $50 million in revenue. That’s counterbalanced by 27% of respondents that come from organizations with $1 billion or more in revenue. These numbers indicate a good cross-section of data center size. (R4480612)

Methodology InformationWeek surveyed business technology decision-makers at North American companies. The survey was conducted online, and respondents were ­recruited via an email invitation containing an embedded link to the survey. The email ­invitation was sent to qualified InformationWeek subscribers. Individual evaluations were conducted for vendors whose products have been used or evaluated in the past 12 months by 35 or more respondents.Respondents were asked to evaluate only those vendors/products for which theyreported recent use or evaluation.